How do misspellings in subject lines or email content affect email deliverability and spam filter placement?
Summary
What email marketers say11Marketer opinions
Email marketer from GMass recommends paying close attention to your writing. Errors in spelling and grammar can make your message seem untrustworthy and push it toward the spam folder.
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that misspellings could affect inbox placement, especially if the receiver has seen similar misspellings in recent spam. However, this might not be a major factor for large email providers unless it closely resembles spam or if the provider lacks domain/IP history.
Email marketer from Neil Patel explains that content quality significantly impacts deliverability. Poor grammar and spelling errors make your email look unprofessional and can trigger spam filters. Focus on proofreading and using proper language.
Email marketer from HubSpot explains that while it may not be the only factor, misspelled words are a sign of inauthenticity and spam filters may mark emails with many grammatical errors as suspicious. Email spam filers are looking for markers of spam, not a simple yes/no.
Marketer from Email Geeks highlights the challenge with ML filters, explaining that they look for patterns, making it difficult to predict what might trigger a negative classification, including correctly or incorrectly spelled words.
Email marketer from Mailjet answers that while not always a primary factor, misspellings and poor grammar contribute to a lower sender reputation. Spam filters analyze content for signs of unprofessionalism, and frequent errors can flag your email as suspicious.
Email marketer from Sendinblue shares that consistent misspellings and grammatical errors can harm your sender reputation. Deliverability is influenced by how ISPs perceive your emails, and professional content signals trustworthiness.
Email marketer from Reddit user u/EmailPro2020 shares, in their experience, a few misspellings aren't a killer, but consistently bad grammar definitely hurts deliverability over time. ISPs start to associate your domain with low-quality content.
Email marketer from Litmus states that while deliverability is complex, typos are a sign of carelessness. Mailbox providers could correlate this with other spam signals, thus hurting your sender reputation.
Email marketer from Woodpecker explains how good email copywriting is important to sender reputation. Small errors show a lack of attention to detail and can affect the way the recipient and the mail provider view the sender.
Email marketer from ActiveCampaign shares that clear, concise writing impacts email deliverability. Whilst email filters do not focus on individual misspellings in emails, they do use more sophisticated language processing systems to see how professionally written the email is.
What the experts say3Expert opinions
Expert from Spamresource explains that spam filters and ISP's use algorithms that score content and spelling and grammar issues will negatively impact the final result. The better your emails are written, the more likely they are to be delivered.
Expert from Email Geeks shares that there isn't one single factor that causes emails to go to spam. Spammers often use misspellings to avoid filters, like misspelling 'Viagra'. So misspellings, when noticed in certain words, can lead to emails being marked as spam. However, many startups creatively misspell their names without automatically being sent to spam. The impact of misspellings is nuanced and depends on whether more bad mail than good mail exhibits the characteristic and the potential harm of misclassification. If it's dangerous mail the filtering will be more aggressive.
Expert from Word to the Wise, Laura Atkins explains that content is definitely part of deliverability. Whilst she does not provide a direct answer relating to spelling, she highlights the complexities of spam filters and how emails should be written with deliverability in mind, to stop them being treated as spam.
What the documentation says5Technical articles
Documentation from RFC touches on standard formats for email content. Whilst it does not include specific rules regarding spelling and grammar, it is more concerned about structure. However, emails with many formatting errors may look suspicious to the recipient or to the mail server.
Documentation from RFC outlines acceptable message formats and states in section 2.1 that format is very important in email, though spelling is not explicitly mentioned, badly formatted emails are more likely to be considered harmful. It is up to the mail administrators to set their own criteria.
Documentation from Spamhaus says that the quality of email content and structure, including the presence of misspellings and bad grammar, can influence your sender reputation, potentially leading to filtering issues.
Documentation from Microsoft indicates that while they look at a variety of signals, emails containing sloppy grammar or spelling errors can be perceived as less trustworthy. This is one factor among many that contributes to deliverability.
Documentation from Google Postmaster Tools explains that while they don't explicitly detail every factor, content quality plays a role in their spam detection algorithms. Emails with poor grammar and excessive errors are more likely to be flagged.